


find me in the drift

by ghiblitears



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dreamsharing, Gen, Post-Season/Series 04, clone shiro theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 03:03:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13332126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghiblitears/pseuds/ghiblitears
Summary: He puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder and it’s startling to note that it feels almost like nothing, though the weight of Shiro’s hand is usually a comfort. Instead a slight warmth lingers in the spot he touches, insubstantial as a beam of light.Keith blinks, and looks back at him. “I can’t feel anything.”“Me either.” Shiro frowns. “It’s like a memory, or...”“A dream.”***(Keith and Shiro meet in the astral plane during and after the events of season 4)





	find me in the drift

**Author's Note:**

> new fic??? from your pal ghiblitears?? it's more likely than you think.
> 
> I watched Pacific Rim on the plane during my winter holidays and it reminded me that I've wanted to do a dreamsharing fic for a long time, and it kind of got out of hand.
> 
> I'm marking this as completed for now, but I might have a follow-up fic to add later. Enjoy!

The night sky is violet and sparkles with stars.

 

It’s the first thing Keith sees when he opens his eyes; the first thing that greets him upon waking up in this strange space. He pauses before moving to orient himself to his new surroundings. This isn’t the Blade of Marmora, not by a long shot — Keith’s standing on a wide plain of dusty rock, blackened beneath the vibrant alien sky. A distant mountain range cuts into the wash of stars. There’s no moon, no visible landmarks, and everything is a little fuzzy; it tracks weird when he waves a hand in front of his face.

 

It’s all so different, a place he’d never seen before in his life. It was as if he’d blinked suddenly and the scene had changed to where he was now, standing in the field of stars.

 

He’s unarmed, clad only in the black t-shirt and pants he’d worn to bed, stripped of his Marmoran armour and blade. In any other circumstance that would set him on edge, but somehow it doesn’t. A quick turn reveals he’s alone in the valley. The ease that’s fallen over him since waking up seems out of place, not at all what he would expect to feel in a situation like this.

 

The last thing he remembers is bunking down in the Blade of Marmora. His thoughts had wandered, as they usually did in the dark. He’d been thinking of Voltron, of the Castle of Lions, of —

 

“Keith?”

 

Despite himself, he’s startled by the voice. Keith turns to see Shiro standing behind him looking surprised, as if he’d suddenly blinked into existence in this place too. Judging by the way the space had been previously empty, he just might have. He too is unarmed, and wearing what Keith recognizes as his pajamas.

 

That was unexpected, to say the least.

 

“Shiro?” Keith steps forward to stand before him. Both their voices sound kind of distant, echoed where they shouldn’t be.

 

Shiro’s eyes look more haunted than usual. Keith doesn’t know what that means, but something in his expression gives him pause, forces him to reassess the situation. But there’s no danger; no one in this place but them.

 

Strange.

 

“Where are we?” Keith asks, tearing his gaze away from Shiro’s to gaze up into the sky. He was never a wayfinder, could never chart the stars the way Shiro did, but he thinks it looks off — just slightly.

 

Shiro clenches his hand, the metal one, though he holds it steady and doesn’t activate it. A reflex. “This is where I fought Zarkon.”

 

Keith is apprehensive immediately. “Where you took back the Black Lion?” He stares, wide-eyed, back at Shiro.

 

He nods, once.

 

“Why are we here?” Keith glances back again, but there’s still no one. The only souls in this astral plane are the paladins of Black and Red. Former paladin, in his case. The thought stings.

 

“I don’t know,” Shiro admits. He takes a hesitant step forward, as if afraid that the landscape will collapse beneath his feet, but nothing happens. He puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder and it’s startling to note that it feels almost like nothing, though the weight of Shiro’s hand is usually a comfort. Instead a slight warmth lingers in the spot he touches, insubstantial as a beam of light.

 

Keith blinks, and looks back at him. “I can’t feel anything.”

 

“Me either.” Shiro frowns. “It’s like a memory, or...”

 

“A dream.”

 

And at that, Shiro laughs quietly. “We’re dreaming together?”

 

“Maybe,” Keith says.

 

Silence falls over them softly, naturally, like nightfall on a calm field.

 

Keith’s favourite thing about Shiro is these moments. He’s far from silent, but he never feels the need to fill the space with words or chatter. The quiet never felt awkward between them, not even at the Garrison when Keith had been permanently agitated and him infinitely patient. It was one of the first times in his life Keith had felt like he was truly being listened to. There was no need to talk, not when Shiro understood him as well as he did.

 

Post-Kerberos, the silence had drowned him. But Keith shakes the thought from his head. Not now.

 

***

They come to realize that the astral plane is both infinite and small, as evidenced by the fact that Shiro starts experimentally walking off towards the mountains, crosses over them, and ends up finding Keith again after a few minutes. They are its sole occupants, and neither of them is actually physically there. Time hints at passing, but it’s hard to tell when perpetual twilight hovers over the plane the way it does.

 

Keith doesn’t care. Time is a rare commodity in war.

 

“It’s connecting us,” Shiro says. He runs a hand along the dark rocky ground. Keith can feel it beneath his fingertips too, the grit and cold of this place, surprisingly real when both of the actual people here are almost nonexistent. They’re sitting side by side, staring off to the mountain range.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I think the astral plane is just a meeting place. Or a projection of one,” he explains. “It doesn’t matter what it is. Its purpose was to get us together.”

 

Keith raises an eyebrow, then shrugs. “I guess.”

 

Shiro’s mouth quirks up in a playful smile. Keith wishes he did that more, and then cuts the thought off before it starts to run away from him. That’s a rabbit he doesn’t want to chase, not when the wound of leaving his team to join the Blade is still so fresh.

 

“I wonder how we’re doing this,” Shiro continues. His tone is curious, unmasking lightness from beneath his normally serious demeanour. It does wonders for him — makes him seem years younger. “Maybe it’s Voltron?”

 

Keith shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be here if it were.”

 

The reassuring smile Shiro gives him doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

 

***

 

Keith and Shiro meet in the astral plane five times.

 

The timing is erratic and random. The first time it happens, Keith makes a note of it, and starts counting the days until it happens again several weeks later. Then three days after that he appears again, and he stops keeping track after that. There’s no pattern, no regularity to the rhythm of the dreamscape.

 

The fourth visit comes on the heels of Naxzela, months later.

 

It’s immediate when he falls asleep, surprisingly quick after such a traumatic event, and it’s the last thing Keith wants. He’s just so tired, still so shaken after what happened. He wants to go back to the Blade of Marmora and lock himself in his room for a week straight.

 

Kolivan would never stand for that, and apparently neither does the astral plane.

 

Keith opens his eyes to the flecked sky, the familiar black rock, and to Shiro, and the first thing he notices is that Shiro looks tired.

 

Neither of them says anything.

 

Keith crosses his arms. “Whatever you’re going to say—“

 

“Nothing, if you’re not ready for it.” Where Shiro would normally be reassuring he just seems exhausted, spent after such a terrible day. Keith has just started to come off the adrenaline high that accompanied his almost-sacrifice; he can’t imagine what Shiro feels like after getting stuck on a ticking time bomb and saved unexpectedly. And by their enemy, no less.

 

Saved where Keith failed, and after he’d promised Shiro to be there. That hurts him more than he cares to admit.

 

“Matt found me first. He already tried to help.” Keith says before he can stop himself. He clenches his hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

 

“It sounds like whatever he did wasn’t enough.”

 

It’s true. But it helped, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. Keith more than ever wishes he had his Marmoran knife, had the familiar comforting weight in his hands instead of nothing. He hates the way everything in this place is dust and light, smoke and mirrors, how helpless he feels when he wakes up here unable to do anything but talk.

 

But Shiro’s not at fault for bringing him here. Matt’s not at fault for trying to help.

 

 Maybe it’s Keith who hasn’t done enough.

 

***

 

The fifth time shakes Keith to his core. The instantaneous arrival is unlike any of his other visits to the astral plane, and he freezes up when he blinks his eyes to see the now-familiar expanse of black rock. It’s wrong — very wrong.

 

This time he isn’t asleep. He’s on a Blade mission on Kolivan’s ship, waiting for a moment of opportunity to enter a hidden Galra moon base. Apprehension grips him. The dream drift has never grabbed him while awake before, and it’s unsettling — but that isn’t the only strange thing. Though he’s only been there a few times, he understands the basic rules that the astral plane operates on. All of them are thrown out the window when he enters the scene; the normally steadfast ground tremors beneath his feet and the plane’s perpetual twilight has been replaced with dark red storm clouds, choking the stars and swirling across the angry sky.

 

And Keith is alone.

 

“Shiro?” he calls, and grits his teeth on the way his voice catches with panic. “Shiro!”

 

A howl of wind is the only response.

 

Keith runs towards the mountain range, the only landmark in the dreamscape. It doesn’t budge; moving through the plane is usually effortless, but this time he feels as though he’s wading through waist-deep water. The air feels cold, thick and oppressive against his clammy skin. A bolt of lightning crackles overhead, spike of light dancing across the clouds like sparks from a fire.

 

“Shiro!”

 

Keith stops running. The shaking ground forces him to catch himself, and he throws an arm out for balance as the rock shifts beneath his feet. A loud clap of thunder crashes against his ears. He clenches his hands into fists, wishing more than anything that he had a better grip on this untethered reality. He watches the roiling sky with unease.

 

“—Keith!”

 

He whips his head back so hard it nearly gives him whiplash, and if it doesn’t, the scene before him definitely does.

 

Shiro is in a bad way, kneeling on the ground and digging his hands into the gritty stone. He stares back at Keith with wide eyes and blown pupils, his breath ragged and gasping. All that before Keith realizes the inherent _wrongness_ that surrounds Shiro, the strange, unstable violet energy that flickers in and out of his incorporeal form. He seems ghostlike, even less real than the other times they’ve met in the astral plane. He reaches out towards Keith and falters, his form blinking in and out of existence quickly. Glitching.

 

“What’s happening?” Keith races over, but when he reciprocates Shiro’s gesture his mind fills with sudden, heavy static.

 

“There’s something wrong — the Castle — something she did — Galra witch — I’m not _me_ , Keith, I’m not him!” Shiro’s voice sounds like an edited recording of sentence fragments patched together. The last phrase is desperate, cut with an undercurrent of fear that he’s rarely heard from Shiro, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Go back — in danger — the others, you have to —“

 

The others in danger?

 

 Keith reaches for Shiro again. This time the feeling is more like an electric shock, and he jerks back on reflex. Anger and fear wrestle in his gut. “I won’t leave you here!”

 

“Please, Keith — never make it — they need you — not safe — I’m not safe, I’m dangerous, _I’m not him!_ “

 

“You’re not _who_?”

 

There’s a moment of clarity, a second or two where the chaos of the astral plane dims around him. Keith’s mind fills with a powerful presence, a recognizable one — and of course that’s the catalyst in all this, that’s what brought them to the dreamscape, that’s what’s been connecting him to Shiro the whole time. A familiar wave of energy washes over him as a voice he’s never heard aloud speaks;

 

_“Go.”_

 

The Black Lion puts the image of the castle in his mind, and Keith knows what he has to do. All he hopes is that it’ll be enough this time.

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this, hmu on tumblr at either ghiblirey or espressopidge (my voltron sideblog)!


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